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I mean its cool but I don't think its worth it. Your essentially paying for a tablet and a laptop. That can't be cheap. Why would you want two operating systems on a single device. I guess this thing is really two devices with one screen. Should make Intel happy since it has two of their possessors. Reply

You're wrong, they now have android for intel. I'd say this is quite innovative too... you have the power savings and longer run time with Android+arm, while having the power and extensibility of intel x86 on Windows+intel. We'll see how the device pans out, but it's an all in one. Reply

The Frankenstein of laptops? But seriously -- if I save a document on the Windows side, how do I open it on the Android side or vice-versa? The level of OS-customization required to make this a good user experience is non-trivial, and I doubt it'll "just work well" out of the box. Reply

Is anyone so numb as to think the cloud is some magical sanctuary hidden far far beyond the reaches of greedy CEOs and opportunistic mail room hackers? Every time you read "the cloud" you should substitute "someone else's computer" for it.Reply

Decent product refreshes from Asus but this one is just idiotic. They could make an argument that the base can be the desktop for the household (or user) but it has a freaking U series CPU so their bet is on Intel's marketing fooling consumers, not an ideal strategy.Reply

While I applaud Asus's committment to "throw everything at a wall and see what sticks" I can't imagine that this will be even close to most consumers price range. The intel chips alone have to be what, $550 combined?Reply

Actually, they got the "Beam" part of it right. You see, the Really Big selling point on this dual CPU unit is that it's now supporting Transporter Functionality! Using this little baby while in bed, you can now summon jelly, (jam, preserves, marmalade, etc; whatever your wife insisted upon that you forgot to bring) to go with morning "Toasts"!

Why so negative? I think it's brilliant. It actually makes a lot of sense. While you're at home, you can dock it and use it as a full desktop, AND have a tablet to mess around with while you're on the couch. Combine the two and you have a laptop you can take anywhere.

I still think it's the wrong approach. Here's what I'm thinking..

Let's say the goal for the mass market convertible laptop is some sort of 800gram 11.6" Core i5 laptop, but also functions as a tablet for the casual stuff (I'm totally ignoring Atom-based full Win8 convertibles because they are too slow).

In a *totally ideal* scenario, you'd have the power of a Core i5-based laptop, AND the 10+ hour tablet battery life that comes from running an Atom (even when running Win8 desktop apps).

The end goal:

Imagine a dual-core Haswell... with a third Atom "battery-saver core" or "companion core" like the Tegra 3 has. On the same die. Instead of further underclocking Haswell, you'd just switch to Atom. Just like Windows has power management options now, you could choose to go into Atom-Only mode when in Tablet mode, or whenever on battery, or whenever you want.Reply

In a *totally ideal* scenario you'd have a laptop and a tablet. You'd choose the right sized tablet and the right sized laptop and the proper power plants and OS for each device. Sound familiar?

I've run out of popcorn watching these product announcements. If you want *totally ideal*, you need a smartphone with a Core iwhatever processor and 500GB of storage that gets 10+ hours of battery life and ships with a truly ubiquitous OS. Then you chose the tablet dock, laptop dock and desktop dock that suits your needs. Or wait 'till Google comes out with surgical implants.

However, in the real world, for now at least, me thinks seeing this thingy is a sign of desperation and Apple was right.Reply

run win8 rt or Android with jobs switching simultaneously. say typing on words in lappy mode then unplug to show client or other department or to printing room.

run both tablet and laptop system together when on power plug stage, so u can direct switching without losing ur work. Then in battery stage, only a special program memory chip is working. store all the .docx, .xlsx etc. Once unplug, ARM chip started, read the memory chip then run the mobile office version.

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

(win7 mode in lappy mode because I don't touch on lappy mode.with keyboard, touch pad and mouse nearer then the screen. and also the finger mark problem. further more, xp or win7 desktop mode! metro mode is dizzy, messy, tedious, sux, faint, head pain.) Reply

meh. I thought it would run windows 8 or android in tablet mode/laptop mode. Give you the best of both, (some apps are only available in one or the other), but nah. It's kinda cool, but if they were just going to use the atom for android why didn't they use an arm chip instead....Reply

My wife could care less about those distinctions. You and I, sure, but for her purposes and people like her, who cares. Angry Birds and MS Word with a Youtube video or two are about as complex as it's going to get for that crowd, which is fine.Reply

Here Intel must have give them a great break in price of the Atom SoC since Haswell is already a default cpu used in this lappy. I figure a Tegra4 would be real cool with Android 4.2.2. Why pay additional when Intel offers FREE (for Atom only in this config) ?!.Reply

I'd rather take Silvermont on its own, but dang if this isn't awesome for Intel.

While those nutcases at Asus are putting these crazy ideas through their funny little heads, I'd love to see an Atom-class tablet with both W8 and Android running on a thin hypervisor. I might even buy one just for the novelty factor.Reply

I like the novel concept, but I don't see it really being useful. Seriously, with Haswell and Windows 8 (soon 8.1), battery life will be fine. Also, you can just run Android virtualized if you really need it.

I think it's a neat concept, but for me, not particularly useful in the world.Reply

This is stupid. I mean, I'm all for Android tablets and I'm all for Windows 8 PC's and hell I'm for Android PC's and Windows 8 tablets. (Though not RT tablets.) But the thing is, I just don't see why you'd want to change interfaces when you made it a tablet from a PC.

Hell, this makes Windows 8 even worse. You use it as a tablet, it's Android. You use it as a PC (laptop/desktop), it's Windows 8 with all its frankenstein stitched together Windows and Metro. So now Asus has stitched Android vaguely beside Windows 8, which itself was just Windows and Metro stitched together.

I can hear some Asus tech screaming, "It's alive! ITS ALIIIIIVE!!!"

Just because you CAN do a thing does not mean that you MUST do that thing.Reply